MAMMALIA 81 



A ' watcher ' belonging to Walney Island, who undoubtedly 

 has been in the habit of killing a great many Eats in the winter- 

 time, recently volunteered the remark that a few Black Eats still 

 existed on the island, but he has not confirmed this statement 

 by forwarding any specimens. The Black Eat recently existed 

 in Furness. Mr. W. A. Durnford obtained an adult female and 

 her young ones at Barrow in 1879. 1 That this breed has been 

 introduced into the port by foreign vessels is highly probable. 2 



Dr. Heysham furnishes ' Eatten ' as the Cumbrian for Eats. 

 Dickinson spells the same word ' Eattan ' in his Glossary. 



BROWN EAT. 



Mus decumanus, Pall. 



This destructive animal is one of the few mammals which 

 have not inhabited Lakeland from prehistoric times. Within 

 fifty years of its arrival, the Brown Eat extirpated all but a few 

 individuals of the Old English Eat, and asserted its obnoxious 

 superiority in many ways. Latterly its numbers have increased 

 owing to the policy adopted by farmers and keepers of extermi- 

 nating with trap and gun the birds and animals that would 

 naturally have held this injurious species in check. I never 

 shall forget the mistaken pride with which a Cumbrian farmer's 

 wife showed me the body of a poor Barn Owl. It was still warm 

 and bleeding ; indeed, we had heard the discharge of the gun 

 with which the farmer shot the ' fancy bird,' as he called it, so 

 that the deed was only just complete. This was in the middle 

 of the ' close-time.' 



This rat is quite as much at home in the burrows which it has 

 tunnelled in the hedge-banks of Walney Island as in the farmers' 



1 Zoologist, 1879, p. 234. 



2 Mr. T. Lindsay, whose extensive acquaintance with the ' ground 

 vermin ' of Lakeland has already been noticed, was asked whether he 

 had ever come across the Old English Black Rat at any of the remote 

 farmsteads of the fells. He at once replied that 'the only breed' of 

 black rats that he had ever heard of swam ashore at Seascale, from the 

 wreck of a foreign fruit vessel. This occurred about 1866. For the time 

 they became established at Seascale. 



F 



